


Reign of the Confederacy

by cunieform



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rise of Empire Era - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Angst, Confederacy of Independent Systems, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 14:45:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/663208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cunieform/pseuds/cunieform
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate universe in which the CIS wins the Clone Wars and Palpatine comes to power through the Separatists instead of the Empire.  Some stand-alone chapters, some serial.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Opening Crawl

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, this is my first Star Wars fanfic and my first fanfic on AO3. It's also my first non-porn fanfic (although that might change). The title and opening crawl aren't final. I'll probably edit them a little as I go along. Sorry about that.

  
Star Wars  
Reign of the Confederacy  
Finally, after three years of bloodshed, the CLONE WARS have ended. The CONFEDERACY OF INDEPENDENT SYSTEMS has emerged triumphant. DARTH SIDIOUS has ordered ORDER 99, banishing all Jedi to the barren world of TATOOINE, now devoid of all life save various settlements of TUSKEN RAIDERS. Meanwhile, ANAKIN SKYWALKER has been turned to the DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE and has joined COUNT DOOKU and other SITH APPRENTICES in the command of billions of BATTLE DROIDS across space, with each apprentice vying to gain SIDIOUS’s favor while maintaining the TRADE FEDERATION’s grip on the galaxy. While the reborn DARTH VADER grieves for his dead wife, PADME AMIDALA, one of the apprentices, QUINLAN VOS, formerly a double-agent for the GALACTIC REPUBLIC, works to preserve his cover indefinitely while resisting the DARK SIDE. While the SITH impose their power over the galaxy, MASTER OBI-WAN KENOBI lives in exile with his fellow JEDI KNIGHTS under constant threat of TUSKEN RAIDER and ROGUE JEDI attacks. But hidden in the sands of that forgotten and forsaken wasteland perhaps lies the key to ending this struggle once and for all....


	2. Grieve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anakin whines feat. grievous

When Anakin Skywalker’s mangled and ruined body was recovered from Mustafar, it was not by clone troopers. It was by battle droids. When he was rebuilt as Lord Vader, he did not assume command of an Empire. The Republic had still fallen, yes—but in its place instead had risen the Confederacy of Independent Systems.  
Anakin’s limbs ached. But not as much as his chest did, he found, as he gasped for air. He struggled to see, but could not.  
“Lord Vader,” croaked the voice of former Supreme Chancellor and current Emperor Palpatine, “Rise.”  
It had taken him a few months to adjust. The helmet confined him. He struggled to breathe. His master assured him that his breathing apparatuses where working perfectly, but he still felt uncomfortable in the suit. He longed for the times when he was allowed to take it off, in his private chamber, his own tiny planet of safety. It was only then that he would allow himself to cry.  
He missed Padme. But his master told him that his suffering gave him anger, which gave him strength. It didn’t make it feel any better, though.  
Despite his grieving and his claustrophobia, nothing was worse than when Palpatine called him to meet with the other apprentices. No matter where he looked, he couldn’t bear but remember the Clone Wars. He shifted his gaze from Dooku, a symbol of the droid army he now commanded, the droid army that had killed so many of his friends, Jedi and clone alike, to Asajj Ventress, who gave him a scar that was now just one of many disfigurations when he was just a padawan. Dooku, at least, feigned diplomacy. He sometimes felt his only friend was Quinlan Vos, the double-turned-triple agent. They were alike in many ways. But he reminded him of the Jedi Order, and of Obi-Wan. He found Darth Maul offputting, although he never spoke to anyone but Palpatine or his brother, Savage Opress. Vader sometimes talked to Aurra Sing, but in many ways she was just another Ventress, but with hair and a skill with blasters. He didn’t care for Dooku’s various acolytes; they were fools. Sidious was the only face he could stand among them. He dared not even look at Grievous. Yes, he reminded him of the droids he had fought against, as did Dooku. But more importantly, Grievous reminded him of the droid he had become.  
To keep his mind occupied, he trained constantly. He could no longer move quite as fast, but he made up for it. In the few times he fought against his fellow Sith, he was nearly unbeatable. Once, he had almost cut Oppress in half accidentally, and was nearly killed by his brother for it. Anakin supposed it was still a sore subject with them. He sighed, and wondered, if the Clone Wars had lasted longer, how much more of the apprentices would be more machine than humanoid? He didn’t like to think about it.  
He didn’t like to think about a lot of things, he began to realize. Sometimes Grievous’s lightsabers reminded him of his padawan, Ahsoka. He needed desperately to find her. With Padme dead, she was all he had left. Assuming she was still alive, of course. He had a few dozen squadrons of droids scouring the galaxy for her, but to no avail. One night, fearing the worst, he snuck into the droid general’s quarters to inspect his lightsaber collection, a walk-in closet filled with relics of his old comrades. He held his breath till his eyes watered so as not to make noise, and prayed to the Force that he wouldn’t recognize any of the hilts. The next morning, Grievous found him asleep on the floor in his armor. He had heard him breathing earlier, when Vader must have thought he was out of earshot, deep in the archives of his vast collection. Grievous could have sworn that the breathing patterns his auditory receptors heard were similar to the patterns of someone crying. Looking down on him now, he could hardly recognize the boy who had once caused such frustration to him during the war, and it wasn’t due to his prosthetic enhancements. He grunted and strode off in contempt of the boy’s weakness, but Anakin later awoke to find someone had put a blanket over him.  
Meetings weren’t as bad after that. Although the two cyborgs never talked about it, and although Anakin still was uncomfortable with his master’s other apprentices, it had stopped hurting so much, at least, when he looked at Grievous. Instead of a hateful mirror he saw a sympathetic face. A face that he would perhaps be able to consider a friend one day. But not yet. Not for a while.


	3. Comforts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> world-building & episode I angst

Order 66 never came. Palpatine easily could have commanded the clones to take up arms against the Jedi, but that would be too suspicious. Maybe it would only make the Jedi realize that someone was playing both sides from the start before they died, but the Dark Lord of the Sith had experienced far too many close calls in the Clone Wars to be eager to risk casting suspicion on himself just yet. If the CIS learned he was once the Supreme Chancellor, he would have to face another war, for which he was neither eager nor yet enough prepared. Eliminating the Jedi had been a far more tedious task than he had expected. When the droid armies had finally reached Coruscant, they began negotiations with the Senate. They came to an agreement: all the Jedi would be exiled and the Republic would cede all remaining territory to the Confederacy, and in exchange the droids did not raze the planet into space dust. By this time, more than half the galaxy had joined the CIS, and the Republic had lost billions of their own, clone and non-clone alike. The Jedi order had been halved, through either battle or desertion. Still, it took years to round up those remaining to transport them to their new penal colony. Securing the planet itself was the hardest part. Palpatine had arranged a xenocide between the two native species, hoping it would scare away the immigrants. As it turned out, they needed some extra motivation. Once only one species remained, legions of droids were sent in to destroy any trace of technology. Finally, a massive blockade was constructed above the planet. Even if the Jedi did find some means of building spacecraft, they would have no way off that blisteringly hot rock. Palpatine had been pleased to hear the last shipment of Jedi had peacefully submitted to their fate and had landed successfully two months ago. Since then, hundreds of squads of battle droids remained on patrol, searching for any Jedi in hiding, and the CIS had begun instating its rule over its new territories. And Darth Sidious was at the helm. He smiled with smug satisfaction. It had all gone according to plan, more or less. He was God now.  
***  
If Obi-Wan Kenobi had known that the CIS would invade Coruscant only days after his duel with Anakin, and had he known that Tatooine was about to become a galactic prison, he would never have sent the newborn Luke Skywalker to live with Owen Lars. As he wandered through the endless, horribly bleak and unimaginably vast sweeps of sand, he searched the Force for some sign of the boy. He knew Luke was still alive, or he would have felt him join the Force. Somehow he had survived the civil war between the Jawas and Tusken Raiders. It was just a matter of finding the boy before the desert swallowed him. Or before it swallowed Obi-Wan, for that matter.  
Anakin wasn’t the only one with painful memories left deep in the sands of the desert planet. While Vader had lived a life of slavery and lost his mother in these wastes, Obi-Wan remembered the last days he had before his master died. For the most part, he had waited with who he had thought was Queen Amidala and her guards on the ship they had just barely managed to fly past the Trade Federation blockade above Naboo. If he had known how little time they would have left, Obi-Wan would have insisted he come with Qui-Gon to search for repair parts. Instead, they spent their final week together almost completely separated until they returned to Coruscant. Sometimes he wished he had done something different. Maybe he could have convinced Qui-Gon to stay on Coruscant. Maybe he could have been faster. Maybe he could have done something, anything, to help his master. It used to feel like there wasn’t enough kolto or bacta in the world to heal the kind of wound a padawan received losing his master. But Obi-Wan became distracted with training Anakin, as part of his promise to Qui-Gon as he died. The wounds began to heal. All wounds did, in time.  
A Jedi must let go of the past, Obi-Wan reminded himself; a Jedi must avoid attachments.  
He sighed to himself, eyes closed. It brought him comfort. The Jedi trudged on through the sand. It was almost suns-set. He would need to find shelter for the night soon.


	4. Pity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> more anime angst, feat. quinlan vos  
> sidenote: does the fandom call anakin/padme anime because that definitely needs to happen

“You nerf-herding slime. You were one of us once. You could have beaten back the Seps. You could have saved--”  
The rebel scum’s words were cut short as her windpipe was crushed invisibly by the Force. Vader kept her hanging in the air while he tended to the rest of the traitors, Quinlan Vos lurking behind him.  
“Vos,” Vader boomed, “crash this bucket into the nearest star. Make sure their comms are destroyed first. We cannot take any risks. Launch the escape pods.”  
Vos had tried his best to hide his discomfort, and backed out of the room. It wasn’t that he wasn’t used to killing. It was just the way that Vader was going about it that disturbed him. It was clear that being in close proximity to the Sith wasn’t a good idea, and Vos was happy to split up for the rest of the mission. While he ordered the few remaining battle droids that had boarded the ship with them, Vader busied himself with dismembering whoever was in sight. He was so angry that he could hardly see. How dare that little bitch preach to him? After all he’d been through? He squeezed harder with the Force. He had sacrificed everything to save his wife, and she died anyway. And now that he had brought peace to the galaxy through the CIS, these ungrateful pieces of bantha shit decide to rise up against him, against the new order he and his master had helped create? Vader would not stand such insolent treason. He would weed out each and every one of these cowards and personally see them run through with his lightsaber blade. Did these Republic loyalists even understand what he had done for them? If it weren’t for Vader and Palpatine, so many more Republic senators and patriots would have been exterminated. They should feel lucky, not betrayed, by the two Sith. The Republic was a broken system anyway. He had done the right thing by joining Palpatine. He had played a part in amending that five-thousand-year-old mistake, and had brought true peace to the galaxy at long last. It was these damned rebels who were disrupting that peace. Obi-Wan said he had failed to bring balance to the Force. Obi-Wan was a kriffing liar. Vader had fulfilled his destiny in the Force. And when he found him, Vader would make sure Master Kenobi knew that before he became one with it.

“Lord Vader,” droned a battle droid.  
“What is it,” he barked.  
“All escape pods have been jettisoned. We need to depart soon before the ship reaches the sun.”  
“Prime the engines. I’ll be along shortly.”  
“Roger, roger.”  
Darth Vader thumbed off his lightsaber and looked around. The rebel he had been choking dropped to the floor, finally, landing in a puddle of various species’ blood. The tissue of her throat had warped and still maintained the impression of his fingers, although they never directly touched the woman. He looked to the mess of bodies on the ground. At least a dozen rebel scum wiped from the galaxy. Good riddance.  
As he turned to leave, Vader stopped as his gaze returned to the woman. For a single, sickening second, he thought he recognized her face as Padme’s. He almost vomited in his helmet.  
It took him ten minutes and a final warning alarm from the shipboard navigation system to finally rouse him to his feet again to finally leave the ship. He watched it crash into the star in silence. Quinlin Vos was left unnoticed by Lord Vader. He stared at him quietly, and felt the blackness inside the boy tighten. Vos pitied him.


	5. Fellowship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> obi-wan becomes ben

Obi-Wan Kenobi had never liked flying, despite being a fairly impressive pilot. Ironically, he now would give almost anything to find any sort of scrap of wing or cockpit he could use to escape Tatooine’s gravity. It seemed the Confederate forces had cleaned the planet up quite a bit. Not even junk remained, at least as far down as Obi-Wan could persuade the Force to help him dig. Not even anything useful enough to make a lean-to. The CIS had been more thorough than necessary, it seemed, a trait uncommon among a trade organization obsessed with cost-cutting. He wondered how the rest of the galaxy was faring. R5-series astromechs and GNK power droids as far as the eye could see, probably. He reached out with the Force and felt a deep degradation on Coruscant. It would soon become a planet-wide slum, he feared.  
He trudged on through the desert until he saw the glimmer of a light ahead. He dropped down and hid in the shadows of a nearby dune, reaching out with the Force tentatively. He couldn’t get a good sense of who was there. Either they were Tusken with no major Force affluence or they were using the Force to conceal themselves. Obi-Wan approached quietly. As he summited the small dune, he could see them below. They were Jedi, it seemed; four sitting around a campfire. Or perhaps they had just survived the purge. He stood up fully, not wanting to alarm them, and began to descend the hill as loudly as he could, nearly stomping he feet. He coughed, clearing his throat. The assortment of sounds was a mild disturbance loud enough to draw the group’s attention without startling them. They got up and slowly made a defensive formation, hands reaching for their belts instinctively, finding nothing. Obi-Wan held his hands up, which caused one of them to duck, fearing a Force attack.  
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, placating them, “I’m a Jedi, like you.”  
In the glow of the fire they circled round, he could see them better. A green, female Twi’lek flanked by two humans of each gender and an imposing, powerful Wookie.  
“Got a lightsaber?” the Twi’lek asked.  
“No,” Obi-Wan replied.  
“Damn. Then you’re just another mouth to feed, then,” she sighed.  
“If it’s any consolation,” said Obi-Wan, “I doubt anyone escaped that indignity. If the CIS could instigate genocide here and purge the planet of all the thousands of miles of junkyard hidden in the sand—and yes, I checked—I don’t think anyone would be able to sneak a lightsaber past them.”  
Obi-Wan paused. He had expected some smart comment about him having dug through the sand, but it never came. He realized he was missing his old padawan, and looked downcast for a moment.  
“You okay, comrade?” The male human asked.  
“Come sit with us,” the woman said, “we don’t have much food, but we have fellowship. You been here long?”  
Obi-Wan sat between the Wookie and the man, and a bowl of some sort of stew was thrust into his hands.  
“Two months, I think.”  
“We’re not the first group of non-Tuskens you’ve met, I hope?”  
“You’re the first group of sentients I’ve met at all, actually.”  
A silence was held for a few seconds, broken by the man slapping Obi-Wan on his shoulder.  
“Well it’s good you’re with us now, huh?” He smiled. It was warm, and didn’t betray the pity he must have held underneath.  
“We should introduce ourselves,” the woman said. “I’m Mara. Next to you is Bardan Jusik and Gwoarn, and you’ve already met Julora.”  
Gwoarn rumbled a few words of greeting in Shryiiwook, and Julora waved a slender, green hand passively before falling over onto her back and returning to gaze up to the stars.  
“So who are you,” asked Jusik.  
“I’m…” Obi-Wan paused. “My name is Ben.”  
“Glad to have you onboard, Ben,” Jusik smiled, clasping his hand and shaking it. Obi-Wan couldn’t help but smile back.


End file.
